


it starts like this

by nikkiRA



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M, Multi, Polyamory, and i have work tomorrow, this is the worst title tbh but i'm too lazy to think of anything else because i'm tired, when will god release me from this hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 09:26:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6950617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I was under the impression that you were only supposed to have feelings for one person at a time.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	it starts like this

**Author's Note:**

> me: *aggressively keeps posting fics until this becomes an actual tag*
> 
> also, side note, it's not my intention to just, like, totally side line thea as if she didn't exist like god help me i don't want to be that fan in re: female characters but like honestly i wrote this in thirty minutes while i was literally sitting in my tiny closet with my dog so like idk i'm sorry she's just never in these fics

It starts like this: a boy with ink on his face.

There are only two things in Kevin Day’s heart – Exy and fear. Two things that Andrew hates.

It starts like this: a boy with eyes that lie.

Andrew should hate everything about Neil Josten, because Andrew hates everything he is – lies and secrets and Exy and brown eyes.

Andrew doesn’t hate him. Andrew doesn’t hate either of them, and he hates that the most.

Or maybe it starts like this: a boy in a bar.

Truthfully it starts a lot earlier than that, but this is where he chooses to start it.

For a long time he thought he was made this way.

* * *

Kevin wants him. His drug addled mind knows that much. His drug addled mind thinks it’s hilarious, because everything is hilarious.

Kevin does not find it funny, but Kevin finds nothing funny, and besides, Kevin doesn’t know that Andrew sees him staring.

* * *

It starts like this: _you were supposed to be a hallucination._

It’s that haze that’s no longer there, six weeks of hell, and he’s out on the other side but here is his hallucination, sitting there and telling him he’s real.

It starts with _if it means losing you, then no._

But no one has ever kept a promise to Andrew Minyard, and drugs or not, Neil Josten will be the same.

* * *

He kisses him anyway. Andrew has never had any sense of self-preservation.

* * *

“Why him?”

Kevin asks this after Baltimore. After Andrew stops hiding. After he wakes up for the first time with another person in his bed without having a panic attack.

He eyes the two on Kevin’s cheek. He is second to this, too. Second to Neil.

“Are you jealous?”

“I just wanted to know why. Why him.”

“As opposed to you?”

Kevin looks calmly back at him.

“You never asked,” Andrew says simply.

Kevin looks taken aback. “I didn’t know I could.”

“That,” Andrew says, “is not my problem.”

* * *

“Can I ask –”

He slides his gaze over to Neil, who is watching his cigarette burn. He’s never asked why he doesn’t smoke them.

“What is going on with you and Kevin?”

“I didn’t know there was anything going on with me and Kevin.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?”

Neil lets out a frustrated breath. “He looks at you like –” He stops and looks away.

“Like?”

“Like I do,” he finally finishes.

Andrew takes a drag of his cigarette. “You’ve been watching him closely,” he observes. He turns his head slightly so he can see Neil blush in his peripheral vision.

“I –” He is looking at Andrew, trying to gauge a reaction. Andrew, for his part, isn’t entirely sure how he feels. He’s mostly just interested to see where this is going. “Kevin doesn’t want me.”

“I wouldn’t presume to know what Kevin wants. Except a championship.”

“Why don’t you want him?” Neil asks, turning the spotlight off of him and back onto Andrew, who is unfazed.

“I don’t recall ever saying that I didn’t.”

Silence. Then: “Oh.”

“Are you jealous?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you more jealous that I want Kevin or that he wants me?”

Neil flicks his cigarette off the roof. Andrew watches it fall until he loses sight of it. “I was under the impression that you were only supposed to have feelings for one person at a time.” Which, Andrew notes, is not an answer.

“There are lots of things we are _supposed_ to do,” Andrew says, taking one last drag and then throwing his cigarette off the roof as well. This time he is able to follow it until it hits the ground.

“Are you upset?”

This is a stupid question, so Andrew doesn’t answer it. “Make him want you.”

“What?”

“Make him want you,” he repeats.

“I – he wants you.” Which, Andrew notes, is not a denial.

“And so do you,” he says.

“I don’t understand.”

Andrew stands. “Monogamy is a made up institution,” is all he says. He leaves Neil sitting on the roof, lost in thought.

* * *

“What did you say to Neil?”

Andrew looks up from the bean bag chair. “I have said many things to Neil.”

“You know what I mean.”

Andrew hates being told what he knows. “He wants you,” is what he tells Kevin.

Kevin opens his mouth, makes some kind of noise that might be the start of a word, and then closes his mouth again. Andrew gives him a bored look.

“I believe your line is _but I don’t want him.”_ But Kevin will not say that. Andrew knows it, Kevin knows it, and Kevin knows that Andrew knows it, too.

“What game are you trying to play?”

“Do you know games other than Exy?”

“Fuck you.”

Andrew raises an eyebrow. Kevin storms out.

* * *

It starts like this: they are kissing, and he sees it.

They are kissing in the dorm room, and Andrew has a very funny feeling that he was supposed to see this. Kevin opens his eyes when he hears the door open, but otherwise he makes no move to stop what they are doing. There is no challenge in his eyes, no gloating, and Andrew knows that he has succeeded. That Neil has done what he asked. Neil is on his toes, stretching up to reach Kevin. Neil either did not hear the door or does not care.

Kevin closes his eyes again, slides a hand around Neil’s neck.

It starts like this: he walks forward, pulls them apart, drags Kevin down by the neck, kisses him.

Kevin kisses him desperately. He kisses him like he’s been drowning, like he needs it, like this is the first and last time he will ever feel Andrew against him. He kisses him so desperately, as if Andrew was the only thing he had ever wanted.

Until now.

“I don’t understand a single thing about you,” Neil says, and Kevin agrees against his lips.

He pulls away. Kevin follows. He pulls away again. Neil doesn’t have as far to go when Andrew kisses him, not like Kevin who is a foot taller than him, and his kiss isn’t as desperate as Kevin’s was, because this is not the first and Neil knows it will not be the last.

Kevin understands quicker than Neil does. Kevin places a kiss on the area behind Neil’s ear and Andrew feels him shudder, whispers _oh._

It starts like this: Kevin spins Neil around, kisses him hard, hands cupping his cheeks, dragging him up, and Andrew noses at the hair on the back of Neil’s head, whispers _yes or no,_ slips his hand down the front of Neil’s pants when he nods. He pulls him apart as Kevin swallows the moans with his kisses, smothering them, and afterwards Andrew bites marks into Kevin’s thighs as Neil keeps him quiet by keeping his mouth occupied.

* * *

It starts like this: he wakes up to morning breath and morning wood. Neil snores and Kevin moves too much, and sometimes Kevin will snore, too, and Andrew hates them both.

Except he doesn’t, and he kind of hates that too.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @borderlineadamparrish (yes i changed my url again)
> 
> i know my endings are always sappy but i just want them to be happy!!!!!! let them be!!!


End file.
